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Robyn Deane (Photo by Shawnee Custalow)
Robyn Deane enjoys retail work, describing herself as “Garden Robyn” for the home improvement store where she’s been a manager since 2007.
But the Midlothian resident wants to move into a new career bringing people together to sort out problems and find solutions — expertise-honed from selling fertility medications for 35 years (she says she had an indirect hand in birthing 4,000 to 5,000 children through that line of work). But it also is a path that comes naturally from personal experiences.
Mediation seems a good career fit, because she says she can listen to all sides, without judgment, and ask questions that draw people out. Such skills have only been enhanced by her experiences as someone who transitioned in the 1990s. It was a lonely path at that time, and she lost her marriage, became estranged from some family members and friends, and faced difficulties in accepting herself, leading her into depression and hospitalization.
And yet those experiences made her stronger, too, motivating her to share her talents in different ways. “I’m totally comfortable with who I am and what’s in my past,” says Deane.
From a young age, most trans people seem to know that they are in the wrong body. It crystalized for Deane when she was about 10 or 11, but actual acceptance followed decades later.
She hid from herself and from others. The fear was too great that her family would disown her, a common experience even now. She never told her mother and father before they passed about who she really is. “I was resisting this fate,” she says.
In her 20s, she began courting her future spouse, Ellen Gardner, double-dating at times with her brother-in-law-to be, former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, who was dating his soon-to-be wife and Deane’s future in-law, Maureen Gardner. Deane and her former wife have three children.
Throughout, Deane wondered and questioned, spending long hours researching what was going on. “I never was a guy,” she says. “I always just looked like a guy when I was born.”
She began transitioning in 1993, acknowledging that she had the “chassis of a guy,” and she was determined to fix it. What followed, though, was what she describes as 10 years of hell, a hero’s journey.
Her church disowned her, and her marriage dissolved in 1997.
“I’m totally comfortable with who I am and what’s in my past.”
Coming out can be a relief, but for Deane it also brought feelings of guilt. She convinced herself that it was wrong. Deane became suicidal, dropped weight to 118 pounds and was hospitalized.
Now, she sees that health crisis as a positive: “I look at it as building a piece of who I am,” she says.
In the early 2000s, she decided to undergo sex-affirming procedures. It’s expensive, costing $10,000 or more, and insurance battles were problematic.
The insurance carrier wanted to classify the work as cosmetic, instead of medically necessary. Deane was patient and prevailed.
Deane describes her social outcast status as if she were sent to a leper colony, and yet it also helped her to grow. She learned how to practice unconditional love, and to forgive others.
She’s since regained many relationships she had lost. She has a great relationship with her children, who are adults. She also has a granddaughter on the way. Her kids, she says, tell her that “you’re really no different than the way you were before, other than your looks.”
She’s been an advocate for transgender and nonbinary people, at times lobbying legislators, but also serving as an educator. Many gays and lesbians see transgender as a subset of sexual orientation, says Deane. She has worked to change that perception in the community. “Before you have an orientation, you have to have an identity,” she says.
It has been an involved journey, but Deane feels blessed. Many friends faced more challenges, she says.
People transitioning now face conflicting situations. Society in general is more open, and it’s easier to find resources and support, and yet there is also pushback, from a renewed ban on trans people joining the military or transitioning while serving to a proposed change in the federal definition of gender that would affix it to biological status at birth.
Such policies are ludicrous to Deane. The military and government, she says, will lose highly qualified professionals as both try to enforce shortsighted policies that won’t stand up over time. “The harsh reality [is], as generations change, that’s all going to go the way of the woolly mammoth anyway,” she says.
As evident in polls, the younger you are, the more likely you are to have positive views of nonbinary people. Hostility stems from ignorance, says Deane. She sees greater tolerance and understanding in more educated and more urban areas, while there are greater difficulties facing trans people in more rural areas. “Those are the people I feel most worried about,” she says.
Richmond, she says, is a warm and open community. Once she came out and became involved, she did not live in fear.
“We are one of the most progressive cities around,” she says. “We have a lot of good people in Richmond.”